The Fight for the Soul of Psychotherapy: An Interview with Linda Michaels

Linda Michaels is a psychologist in private practice in Chicago and a co-founder of the Psychotherapy Action Network (PsiAN). She trained at the Illinois School of Professional Psychology and completed the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy program at the Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute. Before becoming a clinician, she worked in marketing, innovation, and management consulting, including work with organizations in the U.S. and Latin America. Michaels is the chair and co-founder of PsiAN, a public-facing effort focused on helping people understand different forms of psychotherapy and advocate for the kind of care they are seeking. She is also a Consulting Editor at Psychoanalytic Inquiry and Clinical Associate Faculty at the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis. She is currently a Fellow at the Lauder Institute Global MBA program. In this conversation, we trace her path from market research to psychotherapy and then to organizing. We talk about what clients say they want from therapy and how training, insurance, and digital platforms have reshaped the conditions under which psychotherapy is practiced and accessed. We also discuss her writing and research, including PsiAN's national survey work on public attitudes toward therapy ("Going Beneath the Surface: What People Want from Therapy") and a follow-up paper published in 2025 ("The Therapy World Has Changed: Where are We Now?"). We talk about her 2025 article in The American Psychoanalyst, "Corporations in the Consulting Room: What do we stand for, and what stands in our way?" and her edited volume, Advancing Psychotherapy for the Next Generation: Humanizing Mental Health Policy and Practice. Linda also recounts some of the advocacy work she's done and the adversity PsiAN has faced, including being sued by a major therapy platform, as well as how institutional alliances across our professional organizations are reshaping the contemporary mental health marketplace. *** Thank you for being with us to listen to the podcast and read our articles this year. MIA is funded entirely by reader donations. If you value MIA, please help us continue to survive and grow. https://www.madinamerica.com/donate/ To find the Mad in America podcast on your preferred podcast player, click here: https://pod.link/1212789850 © Mad in America 2026. Produced by James Moore https://www.jmaudio.org